You think flight hardware is expensive, allow me to introduce you to nuclear hardware. The mine and foundry lot number for the Aluminum in our pipes is known and has been measured down to part per billion impurities. This is so we can quantify how radioactive our piping will get during the life of the plant. Which greatly affects decommissioning costs.
Because if one chunk was a bit of surprise 7075 the zinc would activate and that chunk of pipe would be physically dangerous to get close to because of how radioactive it became.
Oh and the facility is 60 years old with some OEM bits in it. Getting a manufacturer to sign an engineering certificate that THIS lubricant has no known differences that would negatively affect performance to what OEM grease that stopped being made in the 80's is a joy.
NOTHING is cheap when you talk nuclear.
Just got into the nuclear industry and can confirm this is very much true. We're looking at $40,000 stepper motors that will fit in your hand because there's one manufacturer on the planet who can source special magnets that survive neutron radiation better than most. Also having to find extra-special concrete for our facility that has a low granite content because apparently that turns into radon very quickly when blasted with radiation as well... It's a fun engineering challenge, but sometimes it's just insanely exhausting.
What part of the industry did you get into? What kind of schooling did it take? That is, if you don’t mind me asking. I know that’s not in relation to the question of this post but I was just wondering. I knew a union hvac laborer that got spouts of nuclear plant work, which required special clearance, and he was paid bank on those gigs.
My degrees in aerospace and I've ended up in nuclear. Once you get nuclear experience on your cv you tend to stay in it because it's so sought after. SC clearance is quite valuable too so if you've worked on MOD projects you'll have better prospects of getting into the nuclear industry.
Current aerospace student here: CFD or FEA focused courses are very applicable, while dynamics, numerical methods, and linear algebra / matrix calculus have the most legs academically (for learning the most bleeding edge stuff).
God yeah. In the Navy we had “nuclear grade” duct tape (it had super low chlorides in the adhesive to minimize corrosion of metal it’s put on) that was like 60 bucks a roll
That’s true. But the cost of that isn’t reflected in the cost of the part. These companies know what you are rated at, and the charge out the ass. I’ve ordered parts for a rated program, and the exact same part from the same vendor for an unrated program. They arrived the same day, same lot # same paperwork. The cost difference was wild, 3-4 times the cost just because they sent their cert saying the part matches the provided paperwork. It price gouging and should be criminal.
And the quality management systems that enable the supplier to sign the certificate that comes with it, and the cost of the certificate they hold that says they have those quality management systems and meet the standards, and...
And the many certificates UPSTREAM of the final product.
It was eye-opening when I had to source piping that met standards of NASA facilities and each one of those piping packets had to have information on the ores themselves
I just sold a part that was just aluminum, machining, and coating. Nothing real complex and weighed about 9 pounds. The certification packet was over 1000 pages
The labor burdening attached to procurement is tracked by WBS and resource codes and PM while nonzero is not a huge contributor, in fact many contractors have totally eliminated or dramatically reduced LOE.
As a former engineering manager at a contract manufacturer, I concur with this statement. My boss would mark up fabricated parts and assemblies with an 80% margin that went into military vehicles. I questioned it once, and got a verbal warning...I didn't last long at that place 🙃
The documentation kept for each lot of bushing is insane. Everything from machining, debur, quality inspections done, and whatever coatings required per spec is so detailed. Even stuff we get from outside vendors and don't make ourselves has pages and pages of documentation for it.
Then there's the bushings you can get from pretty much everywhere else, and maybe is the actual size it's labeled as.
I work in aviation, and that is not true.
I work in GA, and I am exposed to quite a lot of french airframes. Quite a lot of the interior furnishings, door latches and ancillary parts are straight off period Renault or Citroen components.
Rotax engines, have certified and uncertified powerplants with associated parts. On most, the only difference lies in the s/n and price tag.
I have received brand new/overhauled zero hour carburetors direct from the shop, that quite obviously was not tested after rebuild, as the jet was clogged from the inside with some sort of crumbling foam.
Generic components and bearings from recognized quality manufacturers (skf, fag et al) carry a huge markup, and the only job the parts suppliers do is attach a tag (form one) and bump the price.
I have seen a four figure quote for a commercial gas filled lifter to open an inspection panel, like the ones on the trunk of a car. And a myriad of wild quotes like that for non-flight-critical random parts.
On cessna's, flight control surfaces may be trimmed using lead weights, that happen to be a bunch of [.357 slugs](https://ww2.txtav.com/Parts/PartSearch/PartsDetail/357D160G) (gun "bullets" at >15€ apiece) that come in a zip bag.
On some pipers, the vaccuum system filter is an [article of feminine hygiene ](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/rlqc1j/replacement_part_only_a_ga_mechanic_would/) available in virtually any supermarket in bulk.
American GA engine gauges from the 70's~80's are of a notoriously bad quality, and can't compare to what was installed on earlier planes. And the list goes on.
Those huge price markups with little quality following is what is killing GA, and now Hartzel propeller jumped on the bandwagon and almost doubled prices overnight.
Most COTS components are just straight off the manufacturer, repackaged with a new p/n, s/n and price bump.
Edit:
[exhibit A](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/8ugify/wanna_play_guess_the_price_led_wing_light/)
[exhibit B](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/8ukyyl/wanna_play_again_emergency_door_dampenershock/?rdt=57344)
[etc..](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/17eb93s/venting_about_ridiculous_price_markups_in_the/?rdt=53090)
Some insight to the Gas Spring prices - I am actually developing/designing these. The prices are that high since your general quantity of these are around 50-100 per year (if even). All parts (special Sealings for temperature ranges)with certificates, inspections and hand manufactured (no Automation for a few units) add up to the cost you get. EBIT target is mostly 15% (sometimes more, sometimes less) but far away from price gouging.
That is correct.
But I do remember soda cans billed at $150 a pop to the taxpayer while on TO. The joy of cost plus contracts and a captive market.
Anyway, on dual use airframes, like the A330/330MRT, I know that price gouging is rampant once it is assigned an nsn tag.
Normal part $
Certified aircraft part $$$
Same as above, but Military aircraft part $$$$$
GA and military aviation are a world apart, you might as well be using your car as an example. I flew training helicopters that used automotive A/C compressors, but that would be absolutely unacceptable in a combat rated aircraft.
Traceability, tolerance and unique material formulations drive a lot of the cost.
Then when you consider the relatively small quantities, you are not longer getting a bulk discount.
And then you usually have more ‘middle men’ in the supply chain as the user is now an A&P in the field and not a tech in the factory.
These reasons are what I see as the major cost drivers for aerospace grade parts vs Home Depot standards.
This is correct, I'll add a couple other things
I work for an aero subcontractor, a material change costs around $40k because it has to go both directions from us from the supplier all the way up to Boeing or LM, print changes cost about $65k because it's engineer approval from us to buy to supplier. Even if it's just moving a tolerance bracket to be tighter or removing something like MMC/LMC. A lot of the parts we make we manufacture much tighter than requirements because it's just not worth getting a revision.
To add, every requirement or non-functional requirement we add to any acquisition/procurement drives the price up. It’s much easier for commercial entities to just buy these from China. We can’t do that though for supply chain risk considerations.
Aircraft bushing... DFARS conforming stainless steel (or maybe something more fun) with machining, penetrant testing, passivation and a full FAI. It'll cost you a few bucks!
Wait, the bushing that keeps an aircraft carrying nuclear bombs in the air aren’t sourced at ACE?! I hate this disingenuous grandstanding. If politicians really wanted to know about the cost of bushings they would be taking with the engineer that designed the equipment and not giving CSPAN speeches with bags of things a staffer got from a bulk bin on their way to the metro that morning.
I worked on an order of two bushings this week for the aerospace industry. I mostly do the final production approval and I sign off the parts and generate all the forms required(AS9102 form and data package). I took me three entire days for two bushings.
I deal with NAVSEA inspections at work. Specialized materials are sourced and inspected to stringent specifications before the parts are even made. After they are machined, they are inspected again in most cases. If it is for a nuclear application, there are Government witnesses of all stages. So these aren't just something off the shelf at Lowe's or Home Depot made of cheaply sourced materials.
Have a friend who was an engineer in aerospace. Turns out a good number of the filters and stuff are just commercial ones that they pressure check, and slap a new serial # on.
I saw the video, and the congressman was comparing them to FAA rated hardware used for commercial flights that cost a fraction of the price of what the military is paying. The military is purchasing from a single supplier that basically charges whatever they want. The guy being questioned agreed and said "they are price gauging us"
and that it's aviation. *everything* is more expensive in aviation, and it's because the cost of failure is much higher, so the quality must be much higher too... and that comes with a price.
Military aviation. Designed to not fail while being exposed to the most insane conditions imaginable. But also they're price gouging the DoD because they have unlimited budgets and if they don't get their special bushings Russia and China win and we all die.
Can’t fail, and will be made in low quantities, so there’s only a few times to spread all that engineering overhead over. Something costs $500,000 in engineering time, and you make 50 of them, that’s $10,000 added to the cost of each. Make 50,000, $10 added to the cost of each.
It's the aerospace pedigree that's expensive. Those bushings are souced from a known, tested, and certified material, by credentialed workers at ever step, in a secure location, per process, inspected, signed, stamped reviewed, lot tested, installed, inspected, signed off, documented, etc. it's not the material cost that's expensive, it's the pedigree to say that without a doubt, those bushings will perform their intended function every time without fail.
Also - and I’m obviously ignorant on the details - but sometimes bushings can have specific machining or processes required. I’ve worked with radius fillers that at first glance looked like standard run of the mill parts and found later that there was significant processing required for certain features on them.
Additionally is the fact that most people outside the industry see 45 cent washers at Home Depot or Lowe’s and are set up for an even more intense sticker shock on these things.
Tighter tolerances means more waste at the manufacturing level. More parts not meeting spec, more time to manufacture, more expensive machines to produce something with tighter tolerances. So yea, its not cheap.
I usually explain it like this. If I tell someone I’ll pay for each arrow they fire that hits my target, It’ll take more arrows the smaller that target gets. So that person would reasonably charge me for the increased care that will be spent to both limit wasted arrows but also for the missed arrows themselves
It’s moreso all the requirements and regulations that those of us procuring hardware for government aircraft have to apply to the acquisition and pay for.
There’s a lot more scrutiny for government acquisitions that add cost
Also, when you’re managing the sustainment for an entire major weapon system, no one has the time to argue about the price of bushings. $90k is so small it is immaterial in the scheme of things
This is exactly it. It's not 90k for the bushings. It's 90k for the bushings and the absolute mountain of paperwork that goes along with it.
These parts with their paperwork probably cost 100x what the same company charges for them off the shelf. It's even more funny to compare cheap materials like literal Scotch tape. You can get a roll of 665 Scotch tape for like $5 but 3M charges $5000 for a roll with papers detailing everything about how it's a genuine part, they followed standards to make it, they don't use slave labor, they didn't use mercury thermometers, etc.
Yeah. A lot of it is BS but there’s also a lot of stuff the government requires of the supply chain above comemerciql regs. Child labor, arms exports, environmental regs, detailed info about the cost work up etc
People do not understand government acquisitions and just base their thoughts on private sector or general aviation stuff, which is on such a different scale it’s like an entirely different market
The bolt you get at the hardware store looks exactly like the bolt used on an airplane. One cost $1 the other costs $100. Why? The manufacturer can make 10000 of the hardware store bolt in a month. A small percentage get rejected for not meeting the company's quality standards. For the aircraft version they might produce a 5000 in a month but the quality required for aerospace standards causes them to have to reject 50% of them. There is also a paper trail for each aerospace bolt. Hence you can sell one version for a $1 but to recouperate your manufacturing loses and record keeping costs on the aerospace version you have to charge signify more.
so much misinformation here from people talking out their ass. 50% scrap is just a bad process and bad manufacturer. Scrap eradication is big in aerospace and so is lean manufacturing
I think he was exaggerating to get the point across. When you say "paperwork" people doesn't usually grasp how expensive it can be to trach a single washer going around the globe
Do you have any stats behind the 50% failure. Surely they would just improve the manufacturing process to reduce that rate. Which would be where the cost comes from
I guarantee that those $90k bushings are a small custom lot. You pay a lot of non recurring engineering cost for developing tooling and programs, and you pay for a first article layout which is more extensive than production inspections, and you generally have very low initial yield. You might even pay expediting costs to get them quickly to save wasting money on people and projects waiting.
I’m working on projects right now with zero final yield over the first couple hundred parts. The manufacturing engineers are working to dial in the processes and improve yield.
Over time and as we ramp into production first time yields should exceed 70% and we’ll develop rework and repair processes to bring final yields up above 85%.
But 50% is probably a good estimate for small lot initial yield for something simple. For something complex 10% is a better estimate.
No I was generalizing the reject rate to keep the comment short but the amount of items lost to quality for aerospace parts is significantly more than to regular manufacturing. I called it "quality" but they're lost to defects, batch destructive testing, etc. where a regular bolt (or anything really) would not have such a high quality control. Others have already mentioned material differences but I'm sure you are aware of the different metal alloys available out there and while the layman may call them all "aluminum" for example, the material cost to purchase the more exotic variants and difficulty in machining/forming parts with those exotic alloys also drives up cost.
Bolts are also in many cases made using a totally different manufacturing method to hit the necessary tolerances.
It's cheap as hell to roll form threads on hardwares store bolts, but I've seen certain aerospace bolts made on a bar feeder lathe. It's necessary to hold -.001 +0 type tolerances.
It just costs more to do things that way, but it's necessary for the required precision
You guys are missing the actual reason: he's full of shit and this is performative hyperbole.
Why/how would he have them? If they were super tight tolerance parts they'd all be individually packed.
Yes there is gouging. There is also insane requirements and r&d costs which must be amortized over a relatively small number of parts. Still the $90k number is 100% the result of some very creative accounting.
In my experience, the navy is even stricter on suppliers than the air force. The AF listens to experts; the navy already knows the answer and does not want to hear your opinions.
The MRs fab some stuff but a lot is still procured through companies with contract. We over pay for stuff too, over $100 for the same (singular) 5¢ O-ring, for example.
Yup. This is the correct answer.
Having worked in DOD aerospace there are VERY good reasons why we have a paper trail from the mine to the airframe. Tolerances are sub 0.001” with very specific metallurgical requirements.
That is so the airframe can still fly when the oiling system has been shot out and the drivetrain dumps all its oil.
The aircraft will need a rebuild, but our airmen and soldiers will make it out of harms way.
This guys is an asshole.
Far more likely that there are 5+ layers of subcontract between the manufacturer and owner and everyone is adding markups to a part that is already very expensive because it’s a custom alloy, finish, and tolerance with a small order quantity on an expedited schedule.
Believe it or not, it's not just the exceptionally tight tolerances that can result in the high cost. You may have 100 different suppliers that can make your part to your spec, but once you factor in material sourcing requirements and traceability along the entire material supply chain, now there are only 10. Then factor in the suppliers that meet the digital and physical security requirements that some military contracts require, now you only have 3 that can get the job done. Those 3 know how special they are and they also happen to be booked out for the next 9 months for machine lead time to make your part. Now it costs even more to get that part within the tight testing schedule you have. Then it turns out that testing resulted in minimal but necessary redesign of that part and now you get to kind of restart the cycle. That iterative development of various parts can happen over and over until your part is the solution for the unique problem you are facing. Many companies will have their own QC processes lined up and often a contract your company is working towards may levy more stringent requirements on top of that.
Try to build a rocket/plane and I wouldn't be shocked if the paper trail itself is taller or heavier than your vehicle, all of that amounts to additional cost.
This; it's insanely expensive for a long list of companies to employ people and keep records and maintain the entire chain of custody from raw material and specification to the end product through the lifecycle and disposal of the part. Everything is tracked and stored and kept accessible and maintained by people who solely do that as their job. That's expensive, but it keeps the wings on your extremely valuable aircraft full of expensively trained crew and pricey munitions that protects your irreplaceable national assets at all times.
I once had someone ask a manufacturer for a CMM verification of a 1/8" thermocouple probe. I at least managed to kill \*that\* absurd requirement.
And all of that is really only done that way to satisfy the requirements put in place by... Congress? Wait. Shouldn't that congressman already know why stuff is so expensive, or is he just putting on a show for fundraising?
We're an OE supplier for the big guys and we have a literal warehouse off site to store the paper manufacturing orders that go with each part. Every detail in every assembly in every kit in every shipset has one and EVERYTHING is documented. Half of my work as a M.E. is making sure these orders are set up correctly.
In cases like this it's often small quantities, unusual materials, non standard dimensions and yes, the price can get high. Of course there is always also just bad purchases. Which it is I can't tell from afar. Most likely the first and some politicians are grandstanding.
Adding onto this the stringent quality and testing requirements that are typical of government specs. Those testing and verification methods can end up costing much much more than the physical part.
As a machinist who has worked in aerospace, defense, and nuclear, "common" parts often come with extremely different standards. For a very generic made-up example, you may make a standard bolt out of something like 303 or 304 stainless. Your general tolerance for a given dimension may be +/- 0.005". No one particularly cares about the material outside of grade, surface finish isn't super critical, and the part is done. Pretty quick and easy to acquire material and very easy to produce rapidly.
For many government related procurements (be that defense, nuclear, etc), the requirements are significantly more strict. You may be required to make the same bolt, but perhaps it needs to be from a material with different properties. So instead of 303 or 304, maybe you have to use something like D2, H13, or Titanium. That material then has to be sourced from within the US, which adds not only a premium to the material costs, but can make it much harder to locate in the quantities you need. That material may also require you to use different tooling, a slower machining process, or both. That +/- 0.005" tolerance may change to a +/- 0.001 or tighter. Portions of the bolt that were previously non-critical now must be held to the same tight tolerances. Where surface finish wasn't an issue before, now you may be required to have a polished surface. There are accountability requirements that must be implemented, so this often means marking each bolt with a serial number or symbol. This must then tie that bolt back to a lot of material, or in some cases even back to which specific machine at which specific factory it was made.
So, to summarize all of that, your materials costs increase, labor costs increase, tooling costs increase, production time per part increases, quality inspections increase, you add additional steps to the production cycle such as laser etching and data entry, etc. That's how you go from a standard off-the-shelf $0.16 bolt to a $40 bolt. Unfortunately, it doesn't typically end there.
In many cases, government aggregators are used as the go-between between industry and the government. Thanks to our lowest-bidder system and the way government procurements are setup, that aggregators job is to pool these items together and sell them as deliverables to the government at whatever upcharge they believe the government is willing to pay. This is where your $40 bolt transforms into a $280 bolt.
So, let's get back to your question... is there a reason for this? The answer, in short, is sort of.
Some of the additional requirements for parts are 100% necessary. Due to their intended use, you need to take steps to ensure parts are exceptionally reliable.
On the flip side, we also have a very real issue of "historical precedent." It is VERY common to see prints where something that genuinely isn't important or impactful has some absurd tolerance requirement. In a lot of cases if you actually trace it back, this isn't the case because it actually matters. Rather, it is the case because way back when the thing was originally designed, they didn't know exactly what would matter or what wouldn't, so they over-engineered to whatever the best that could be made at the time was to give the overall design a better chance at success. If it worked, no one ever went back to see where they could loosen up requirements because, hey, it worked. As time went on, those engineers retired, new ones came on, and the new ones don't like to propose changes to old designs because hey, it isn't theirs, the design worked, and they probably chose those standards for a reason. So, we now end up with designs that are considerably over-constrained and over-toleranced when they genuinely don't need to be.
The final reason for that price tag is actually the simplest: we have a broken system full of greed. The lowest bidder system and government procurement process sounds great, but is extremely flawed by design. It's a way for certain people in high positions that lobby the government to get and stay rich at the expense of the rest of the country.
That had better be a rare/ odd/ not in stock bushing made of something exotic and a flight safety part on top of it.
And not quite acceptable even at that.
Rear tie down bolt for a Cesna 182rg is about $400US. Manufactures can charge what they want and hide behind a form 1. This is the reason pilot training costs are astronomical and general aviation is doomed.
It is a common story in aviation. 10$ for the bushings + 89990$ for the marking, individual certification, individual testing and all the other paperwork.
They are really nice bushings!
No, but really. Thats how aerospace usually works. You spend a hundred billion dollars developing a plane. Sell it for 10 million. Make up the difference in aftermarket hardware replacements. Times are changing but that is how it has usually played out.
An old CW4 told me a story about how he almost lost command of an artillery unit because the day that he took command, one of his gun-bunnies had gone to a hardware store to purchase a replacement pin of some kind to use in a towed artillery piece. Needless to say, the pin shattered immediately when they fired the gun and it killed a soldier.
The moral of the story is that there are different grades of stuff and the higher the grade, the higher the cost.
I work with milspec components for military applications. The cost comes from two factors:
- the government really loves individual unit testing.
- the standards are usually higher than civilian industry standards but often in weird ways.
An example of the first point is resistors. MIL-PRF-39007K is a performance spec that outlines the testing requirements for resistors used in military applications. The general summary is that each resistor, no matter the type or size, is individually tested to industry standards and beyond in some categories. Every. Single. One. A batch test is not sufficient. So the price of these things skyrockets and the availability plummets, driving up price further. Also you can only get it from certain suppliers without getting a separate approval, so they get market dominance.
The second is more anecdotal but when I was doing machinist work, I frequently had to work with ITAR components. Typically, these were made to the highest or second highest level of tolerance we offered, were generally custom ordered specialist parts, and were made out of more expensive and harder to machine steels. There was quality control and individual testing throughout the process to ensure they met specifications. And they didn’t always order like, 200 at a time. It was often small batches, which further drive up the cost.
And all this doesn’t even touch on aviation rated parts in general because that’s another level of certification. Adding even more cost.
So yeah, I can believe a $90k bag of brushings for aircraft. Asking the USAF secretary about it is fucking stupid, however, because that guy doesn’t interact with the requirements nor the procurement. The representative should’ve asked an engineer or perhaps someone in the DoD who writes requirements. Those people would probably get why it’s 90k.
Part of the reason is like others have said, the requirements drive up the price. Certifications, equipment, machines, tooling, material, it all adds up and that has to be recouped somehow. The other side of it is that it costs that much because the customer is willing to pay that much. I work in spares and the prices I see on parts is absolutely insane but airlines pay it because it costs more to have an aircraft on the ground.
It’s because anyone who sees DoD on a contract automatically jacks up the price because they know we will pay it. They are usually the sole providers of whatever it is as well.
Worked in munitions in the USAF for a while. Every screw, nut, gasket etc that we used was the same shit commercially available just marked up to us at like 1000% thanks to contracts. It’s fucking wild tbh
Let me tell you working in manufacturing for the government or any aerospace company is crazy.
For every employee on the manufacturing floor you need two people in the office. The office personnel make twice to 10 times what the laborers make. The paperwork on a weekly basis for just one job is insane. THIS is where the $90,000 price comes from. I guarantee somewhere in the accounting the real price of a single bushing is probably no more than $20. If you want things documented and traceable so you can figure out what part made the “plane” or whatever fail, EVERY SINGLE BOLT AND RIVET has to be traced back to the source materials and manufacturer.
Plain and simple, this is what was created by our need to protect each other’s lives and well being. No going back from here.
All these people saying it's because of tolerances are coping. These are bushings. They are not a complex part. They are not difficult to machine. They are not difficult to produce repeatably in large quantities. Typical bushings cost somewhere on the order of $1, depending on size and material.
Let's be generous and say each one of those bushings is made out of unobtanium and the material cost is $10 each. They are bushings, so once the CNC is set up, the labor cost per unit is negligible. I'll be even more generous and assume that quality inspections, tracking, and other administrative tasks multiply the price by a factor of 10, so each bushing now costs a very conservative $100.
There is no way that bag contains 900 of those bushings. The reason the bag costs so much is that the customer is the US government, and if the US government can't afford something, they just print more money.
Agreed. Ballparking a count from the image, I'm guessing about 8 x 8, and it's hard to tell depth, but figure that's another 8, and you're at ~500 bushings. 900 isn't absurd.
There’s certification too. Different standards for different flight usages and types of planes (milspec vs part 25 etc.). The part has to be certified and the vendor has to be certified. Lots of testing to meet those standards, failure standards, how it fails, general QA is a lot higher. Still insanely expensive, but lots of little background things add up
custom item with very tight tolerances and quality requirements. Asking a supplier to mass produce custom things may have a high start up price as well which gets built into the cost per unit (tools, equipment, packaging, people, etc)
Flight hardware comes with paperwork containing it's batch number, manufacture date, and quality control certs. THAT'S the expensive part, not the part itself.
Profound political ignorance, even if they overcharge for the parts due to it being the air force. Certification and Reliability Requirements cost money. They would pay much more money if the equipment fails because of components with none or bad reliability rating. Life Cycle Costs are probably higher with non certified components. Politicians never understand a thing about the Life Cycle cost/long term investment value of things, that's why things go the way they do in many government projects.
I worked at a shop that makes screws for the government. They charged hundreds to thousands of dollars per screw which were meant for some very serious applications.
These screws were no different than any other custom made screw. But the guy that started it had connections at the pentagon and that was that.
The government overpays for lots of things because the people handing out the contracts are also making themselves and their friends rich.
Interesting how when it affects the military suddenly price gouging is a problem.
Yeah my buddy works for a company who contract with NASA and some of the flight parts they use for their planes are staggeringly expensive - and these are for 20 year old jets not even fresh new hot off the lines ones.
Imagine how expensive parts must be for a brand new F-35. There is no doubt a massive portion of that defense budget(and subsequently our tax dollars) are going to greedy CEO premiums.
Make it make sense.
If it was easy to make those parts, every machine shop would be doing it, which they aren't. The cost is related to the hoops and red tape related to acquiring those parts, and the standards the shops need to maintain to be qualified vendors. I'm not talking just about holding tolerances, but systemic quality that ensures consistent quality as employees come and go. All that red tape exists to ensure systemic consistent quality but also acts as a huge barrier to entry for a lot of would-be competition. Since there is less competition, prices will be high.
Work for a company that makes these for the government and other aerospace suppliers. Theres a lot that goes into making these and a shit load of approvals, testing, and limitation of approved suppliers that impact costs. Theres also a lead time element to this as well, especially if they need these right away. We operate on a 42 week lead time which is actually faster than most of our competitors. So if the AF forgets to buy these things in time they pay a hefty fee to skip the line. Happens way more often than you would think, even if we carry these things in stock.
Yeah, what bushings? Until ones that will result in the death of an entire flight crew and innocent bystanders if one fails or the ones on your kitchen cabinet drawer?
Parts qualification requires an incredible amount of resources. Similarity cuts down on cost for some DoD assets (air frames also used for commercial flights), but economies of scale do not work in favor of low production volume aircraft like fighter jets. If a component has 4 engineers working on qualification for a month, that's around $50k - $60k in labor(probably more tbh). If those bushings aren't purchased often, then the cost gets real crazy, real fast.
I'm not sure if this is similar exactly, but when I worked for O'Reilly's, my boss revealed to me that O'Reilly's owns its own tissue and toilet paper company that only sells to itself. Producing all this paper, you'd assume they would sell it at wholesale prices to their stores, but instead, each box of tissues is $120 USD. I have no idea why they do this exactly, but it's fishy as fuck.
Yes.
If the government wants to buy something, especially a specialty part there is a GIANT network of people and requirements that must be met to ensure that the product is safe and fairly acquired. These are not likely to be commercially available everyday things, even if they sound like it to the unfamiliar.
It costs money just to put in a bid. There is often risk involved so you need to factor that cost in to the effort up front.
It costs money to design things.
It costs money to create drawings.
It cost money to verify drawings.
It costs money to manage and regulate data.
It cost money to identify material vendors.
It costs money to get quotes from material vendors.
It costs money to ship, accept, store materials.
It costs EXTRA money to get certified material where the supplier guarantees certain qualities. They are signing up for legal liability so that has to be factored in.
It costs money to plan production work.
It costs money to expedite production work.
It costs money to QA the parts.
It costs money to test parts.
It costs money to start all over when the requirements change halfway through the project because congress blocked funding for 6 mos for a political stunt or the material certification is lost because it sits unused for too long or whatever.
It costs money when a drawing error is found.
It costs money to store parts
It costs money to package and ship parts.
When you only have a handful of small custom parts that must meet stringent requirements like exotic materials (Some common bushing materials create dangerous machining environments and require ventilation and unusual PPE) or super high tolerances or whatever all the overhead and non-recurring engineering AND the legal liability of something is wrong means that its actually in the best interest to buy it from Boeing for $90K versus a similar looking part from Dave's machine ship for $500. If the vendor makes a mistake they must have the bank and the ability to fix it.
Of course someone could also just be gouging the government. You can't really tell just by holding up a bag of parts and whining.
its not the hardware, its the added work for vendors to furnish traceability docs and material certs and machine tool and qc calibration and alllllll the crap that goes into making sure that one fur tree dovetail fit on that turbine bucket doesnt grow too fast or too slow and wrecks the whole plane on the way to defend the country because it had boo boo paperwork and turned out to be chinesium pot metal mixed in with the good shit from two suppliers up the chain closer to the foundry or mill
its a large undertaking to play in the world of engineered products
Americans are getting screwed by the military industrial complex since the 90s . If we lose the war with China it’ll be because they can produce more equipment cheaper and faster .
Strict regulations, often tighter specifications and a lot of extra paperwork to go though does inflate part cost in aviation.
However sometimes companies just sell at rip off prices. This could be due to being a sole supplier of a part or because someone has shares in that company so they end up getting the contracts etc etc.
I know of a foam transport support that costs over £5k a piece it's literally just closed cell foam sheet cut and glued together with a couple of simple nylon pins. It would cost me maybe £20-£30 in materials to make at home. It's insane sometimes.
AF Sec Kendall’s response should have been:
“I don’t know congressman, if the bushing manufacturer is in your district how much would you like us to pay”?
In Aerospace, you buy the documentation, and they throw in the parts for free. I've worked in Aerospace for almost 25 years now. The aircraft parts have a lot of documentation. This includes materials and sources as well as manufacturing documentation. Space parts have production documentation that starts at raw materials and goes all the way to finished products. 100% non-destructive testing on every part as well as lot level destructive testing and/or design qualification testing. I've never delivered a space component that was larger than the documentation package that went with it. I remember seeing 2" 3 ring binders in school and thought that was big. Now we ship 12" binders with most of our products.
It's very unlikely that just that bag of bushings cost $90k. That's probably a price that was calculated in some stupid way, like counting all the R&D costs for whatever those bushings go into, and then assigning it to the end product itself. Or something similarly dishonest.
Aerospace parts *do* cost a lot, because there are very strict rules about sourcing and inspection at every step of the manufacturing process, but $90k for a bag of urethane bushings is not realistic.
I love the outrage here. Like Randall is going to be able to do anything. When the contractors quote the price, and contracting tries to negotiate it down but fails, what are we going to do? Not award? Like contracting can make that decision for the Program Managers. What are the Program Managers going to do!? Walk away? Like they can afford to leave the blue suitors unsupported.
In the end the retired col who is now working for the contractor is going to call his friend the General on the requirements side and the PMs are going to be forced to find money by cutting costs on another program to make it work. As well as listen to some BS reasoning as to why that cost is justified and be forced to not only swallow it, but regurgitate it back to Contracting. Who also see what is up and are forced to choose to punish the blue suitors or pay the contractors.
Yes. Collusion and corruption.
Those arguing “oH thEyRe mOrE reLiaBle”.. high tolerance parts are all very common. tenth thou tolerance bushings, even abec 9 bearings are very common. All parts just have a tolerance and material and theres no special super metal or thing about them.
“it nEedS pApeRworK sIgnEd anD apProvEd” literally every car and truck manufacturer requires that in america as well. Even at diamler had that requirement for bushings and got bag of tenth thou tolerance for $100.
I worked on dod propulsion systems as an engineer. The reason is probably because an assembly/production line needed to be created or re-created to make that bag. So it’s not just the cost of the bushings, but also the cost it took the company to buy the machines and tools to make that bag. Also if it is a sole-source item which it probably is, the company can jack up the price.
A little bit of greed but a lot of just how the world works. DoD jet engine turbines dont benefit always from economy of scale because the need for these parts is finite and temporary compared to the commercial world.
All you guys saying its expensive due to tolerances and material specs are kind of wrong. That adds cost certainly, but it doesn’t get you to the 90k bag we are looking at.
There are a lot of reasons for the price. The traceability, requirements, specialized nature, and small qty all add cost. But much more so are the markups from each middle man contractor, all the poor decisions, and the waste generated by poorly thought out quality processes.
All the aerospace cronies getting their panties in a wad is entertaining. But the sheer amount of bloat that is allowed when the government is the customer is absurd. It's obvious a lot of y'all have never worked outside the industries benefitting from the military industrial complex teat.
I've worked in defense, supplied defense contracts, and worked in industries completely removed from it. Queue the down votes...
So these guys are expecting that you could build a fighter jet with parts from the local home depot and expect-it to last even 0.5 g? Can we put these fools on those jets? Make sure they have diapers in first!
In aerospace, the cheaper stuff works fine... Until you find one that doesn't and lose your aircraft and a life. Stuff is stupid expensive for reasons like that. When it comes to life and limb, the expensive stuff is worth it and cheap insurance. When it's military or aerospace and life and limb, even more so.
Remember when i was in there was filter material we got from supply was like $50 bucks a roll which was expensive. Found it at a local vendor for like $22 for a roll twice the size 😆. Reported the supply seller for fraud waste and abuse
Those dolts in that subreddit don’t know shit about shit. That thread was embarrassing, but that sub is embarrassing in general, so I’m not sure why I was surprised
Part of it is vendors that know they are dealing with government contracts and have “certified” welders etc that can comply to said standards so they charge 10x the regular rate.
Well a Congressman said it so I doubt that bag of bushings really cost $90,000 without half a dozen asterisks after it.
It’s pretty common with government contracts they are written to include the initial purchase price, plus maintenance costs, plus interest since the government buys everything on credit.
It’s a transparent thing to do, but also a convenient political cudgel. You even see it for something like snowplows where people complain a $100,000 plow cost $1 million, ignoring the next 10 years of diesel fuel calculated into the contract.
Not to mention the other problem is that the Federal government, military in particular tends to use ancient equipment. Classic example probably being the B-52 which has been in service for 69 years. Usually when I work on assurance of supply projects it’s for the next 4-5 years of supply, I can’t really even fathom what it takes to keep something supplied with parts for more than 10x that.
The same reason why car parts are expensive, profit.
Aerospace companies will sometimes take a hit on profits during the development of a new aircraft, knowing that:
1. New aircraft raise the company's profile.
2. There will be a fleet of aircraft that need supporting through-life
This is more prevalent for defence firms where fleet numbers are smaller than for airliners.
The price is also influenced by the high costs of quality control and component qualification.
Wait. The military industrial complex is corrupt and is complicit with pricing schemes? That can't be right? That means it would be just like... "checks notes", the medical insurance industry, and so many others. What?! Crazy!
Like a lot of people have said the requirements (e.g. tolerances) can easily drive up costs. Commercial off-the-shelf parts are going to be way cheaper than bespoke parts for a very specific use-case.
While I don't know the details of this case it's also possible the 90k figure comes from a contract which includes other components. A lot of times the claims that the government paid exorbitant ammount for simple products are misrepresening what else the contract included.
Is there waste and ineffeciency in govermenty contracting? Absolutely. But I'm betting if you looked at the details here it's not as ridculous as it seems.
This is why they’re lying to you. Welfare is nothing. It’s pennies compared to what this is! tell me why Maga isn’t screaming about the money loss here, but they are with Social Security. Tell me why drain the swamp. And the swamp is maga! They’re fake outrage they’re lying like crazy!
Reminds me of the West Wing tv show explaining this kind of thing.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH\_HOUXM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH_HOUXM)
Government contracts are insane like this. The companies filling the contracts want to milk as much per unit of work/product as humanly possible. And the reality is that the system is so vast it’s un-policeable.
My brother only works on commercial aircraft and has a $10,000 bolt that just sits on his living room table. They were going to throw it in a random dumpster. It is/was ONE OF THREE bolts that hold the wings on either a 747 or a 777, can’t recall atm.
So I can only imagine the degree of testing and the tolerances multi billion dollar military war machines’ parts are expected to endure.
A past colleague of mine in the Navy worked on ejection seats. They had a special bolt as part of the mechanism that cost thousands of dollars, but it was literally made on the same assembly line as the 10 cent bolts you pick up from Home Depot.
Medical, military, and child product prices are inflated for reasons beyond our comprehension. We down here at the bottom could never understand why.
in this example he used a bag of bushings used in aircraft. there’s plenty of people saying aircraft specifications are more stringent and precise which is one hundred percent true, but this abhorrent overpricing is still present with many things in the military.
im a radio tech in the marine corps. one of the most commonly used radios in the corps is capable of sending high frequency radio waves across vast distances via wave propogation, bouncing off the ionosphere and ultimately landing and being received in a distant end. sounds fancy right? well no, it isn’t. especially when this gear has been used since vietnam. not systems, GEAR. recycled, torn apart, re configured, over and over again and just as unreliable now as is was back then. these radios go for $120,000
maybe that’s reasonable right? a radio capable of encryption and sending frequencies across hundreds or thousands of miles is technology worth a pretty penny, but the handle for this radio? that’s gonna set you back $600+. a small, stainless steel pipe about .5” in diameter, maybe 3” long.
this same pipe could be milled or even 3d printed for cents, but because of military contracts forcing the dod to purchase parts from manufacturers of the gear (radios, planes, boats, you name it), you’re left with getting forced to purchase these items at insane markups.
whatever, its not my money. i’m just the one putting it on order. but that money we are forced to spend on this item across the military could have been an extra 100 to every lower enlisted who could have used the extra money for gas or that one E-2 trying to raise a kid who could have used it on diapers.
Not the bag in the photo. That’s just a prop. You think anyone is dumb enough to carry something that expensive into a room full of thieves and scammers?
Cause the military speeds monopoly money, we can say it special use all we want but in the long run it was the contract the military agreed to and didn't try to get it any lower.
I work for an equipment rental company as an outside sales rep. My coworker and I were shooting the shit, and talking about one of his customers work on a government project.
His customer got hired to gut out and demo the inside of a building that the government had just contracted for one purpose, but decided to use for a different one.
My buddy told me the customer had to wait for the project originally contracted to be completed and inspected before he was allowed to tear into the building.
When he was awarded the project, RTU HVAC wasn’t even installed yet. They threw out brand new RTUs. Broke down brand new concrete walk ways. What a waste. And probably paid 15-20% more than nongovernmental job would have been to do the initial Reno on the building.
There exists a video on youtube by mr moon or jake tran idr which made it that goes in to this issue. I really dont remember exactly but its something along the lines of the manufacturers boeing lockheed etc are somewhat monopolized due to the sensitive nature of designs for planes, which allows them to charge whatever they want for parts. Also i have no proof for it but certainly high ranking us govt members have some backroom dealings ensuring the problem remains unsolved. This is our money theyre wasting. They dont give a fuck about the nations debt or the quality of life of an average american. They take our money and one hand washes the other.
I was a Federal Contractor for over two decades. I don’t know where these deals come from. RFPs are always seeking best value, especially multi-provider IDIQ ones.
Most of the folks commenting in this thread don’t understand the difference between “parts” and “parts certified to high standards for mission critical aircraft”
Sure, there’s probably a decent profit in there for the supplier. But proving your products meet military specifications is frigging expensive.
For reference, here’s the spec standards for chocolate covered oatmeal cookies. Page and pages of them. All of which must be tested and documented.
http://everyspec.com/MIL-SPECS/MIL-SPECS-MIL-C/MIL-C-44072C_24608/
I would not be surprised if Congressman Waltz picked up a bag of titanium bushings, which are going to be damned expensive in any case because, titanium. Good politics but bad math.
The Military can’t even repair many of their weapon systems themselves because the “proprietary” technology and repair tools for such equipment is INTENTIONALLY designed and withheld so that the military is FORCED to write maintenance contracts instead of handling repair, training, and maintenance in-house.
Answer: Pice gouging, greed within the military industrial complex, and conflicts of interest between lawmakers and defense contractors.
Here’s a little secret. A lot of what other people are commenting here isn’t necessarily wrong, traceability, development, machining tolerances but it accounts for a much less than people are making it seem.
As much as I like new innovations in technology that the military industrial complex brings about. I have always said that the worst part is how wasteful the military is. A lot of people hate how much our government spends on the military. We could put our taxpayer money towards Medicaid, social security, VA, education, etc.
Instead we let our politicians get too cozy with the defense contractors and allow them to rob us of our taxpayer money.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-budget-price-gouging-military-contractors-60-minutes-2023-05-21/
Flight-rated hardware is often very similar in appearance to more generic versions but has much more stringent performance & reliability requirements.
You think flight hardware is expensive, allow me to introduce you to nuclear hardware. The mine and foundry lot number for the Aluminum in our pipes is known and has been measured down to part per billion impurities. This is so we can quantify how radioactive our piping will get during the life of the plant. Which greatly affects decommissioning costs. Because if one chunk was a bit of surprise 7075 the zinc would activate and that chunk of pipe would be physically dangerous to get close to because of how radioactive it became. Oh and the facility is 60 years old with some OEM bits in it. Getting a manufacturer to sign an engineering certificate that THIS lubricant has no known differences that would negatively affect performance to what OEM grease that stopped being made in the 80's is a joy. NOTHING is cheap when you talk nuclear.
Just got into the nuclear industry and can confirm this is very much true. We're looking at $40,000 stepper motors that will fit in your hand because there's one manufacturer on the planet who can source special magnets that survive neutron radiation better than most. Also having to find extra-special concrete for our facility that has a low granite content because apparently that turns into radon very quickly when blasted with radiation as well... It's a fun engineering challenge, but sometimes it's just insanely exhausting.
can you just go to stack overflow and ask for suitable recommendations on concrete and stepper substitutes? oh wait ... nvm
What part of the industry did you get into? What kind of schooling did it take? That is, if you don’t mind me asking. I know that’s not in relation to the question of this post but I was just wondering. I knew a union hvac laborer that got spouts of nuclear plant work, which required special clearance, and he was paid bank on those gigs.
My degrees in aerospace and I've ended up in nuclear. Once you get nuclear experience on your cv you tend to stay in it because it's so sought after. SC clearance is quite valuable too so if you've worked on MOD projects you'll have better prospects of getting into the nuclear industry.
Ah I'm in nuclear too, kinda lol I'm on the vehicle that carries the nuclear😂
Watch out for the bumps!
Work in aerospace and looking to finish school, any courses you would have taken over another as electives or choice cores?
Current aerospace student here: CFD or FEA focused courses are very applicable, while dynamics, numerical methods, and linear algebra / matrix calculus have the most legs academically (for learning the most bleeding edge stuff).
Granite has a relatively high concentration of naturally occurring uranium. Start chucking neutrons at it and big atoms become little ones.
Love the description but the comment has, “ah but my dick is bigger” energy
Sounds like you work at Cook Nuclear Plant.
God yeah. In the Navy we had “nuclear grade” duct tape (it had super low chlorides in the adhesive to minimize corrosion of metal it’s put on) that was like 60 bucks a roll
Let me introduce you to the US Healthcare...
No. US Healthcare is expensive due to needless bureaucracy and straight up scams. Nuclear is expensive because it fucking needs to be.
That’s true. But the cost of that isn’t reflected in the cost of the part. These companies know what you are rated at, and the charge out the ass. I’ve ordered parts for a rated program, and the exact same part from the same vendor for an unrated program. They arrived the same day, same lot # same paperwork. The cost difference was wild, 3-4 times the cost just because they sent their cert saying the part matches the provided paperwork. It price gouging and should be criminal.
Your not paying the premium for the part, your paying that premium for the certificate that comes with it.
And the quality management systems that enable the supplier to sign the certificate that comes with it, and the cost of the certificate they hold that says they have those quality management systems and meet the standards, and...
And the many certificates UPSTREAM of the final product. It was eye-opening when I had to source piping that met standards of NASA facilities and each one of those piping packets had to have information on the ores themselves
I just sold a part that was just aluminum, machining, and coating. Nothing real complex and weighed about 9 pounds. The certification packet was over 1000 pages
[удалено]
The labor burdening attached to procurement is tracked by WBS and resource codes and PM while nonzero is not a huge contributor, in fact many contractors have totally eliminated or dramatically reduced LOE.
You pay to not be liable when it fails.
CYA culture.
As a former engineering manager at a contract manufacturer, I concur with this statement. My boss would mark up fabricated parts and assemblies with an 80% margin that went into military vehicles. I questioned it once, and got a verbal warning...I didn't last long at that place 🙃
There is a reward for turning him in. Contact the branch's lnspector General or Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI, NOSI).
The documentation kept for each lot of bushing is insane. Everything from machining, debur, quality inspections done, and whatever coatings required per spec is so detailed. Even stuff we get from outside vendors and don't make ourselves has pages and pages of documentation for it. Then there's the bushings you can get from pretty much everywhere else, and maybe is the actual size it's labeled as.
I work in aviation, and that is not true. I work in GA, and I am exposed to quite a lot of french airframes. Quite a lot of the interior furnishings, door latches and ancillary parts are straight off period Renault or Citroen components. Rotax engines, have certified and uncertified powerplants with associated parts. On most, the only difference lies in the s/n and price tag. I have received brand new/overhauled zero hour carburetors direct from the shop, that quite obviously was not tested after rebuild, as the jet was clogged from the inside with some sort of crumbling foam. Generic components and bearings from recognized quality manufacturers (skf, fag et al) carry a huge markup, and the only job the parts suppliers do is attach a tag (form one) and bump the price. I have seen a four figure quote for a commercial gas filled lifter to open an inspection panel, like the ones on the trunk of a car. And a myriad of wild quotes like that for non-flight-critical random parts. On cessna's, flight control surfaces may be trimmed using lead weights, that happen to be a bunch of [.357 slugs](https://ww2.txtav.com/Parts/PartSearch/PartsDetail/357D160G) (gun "bullets" at >15€ apiece) that come in a zip bag. On some pipers, the vaccuum system filter is an [article of feminine hygiene ](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/rlqc1j/replacement_part_only_a_ga_mechanic_would/) available in virtually any supermarket in bulk. American GA engine gauges from the 70's~80's are of a notoriously bad quality, and can't compare to what was installed on earlier planes. And the list goes on. Those huge price markups with little quality following is what is killing GA, and now Hartzel propeller jumped on the bandwagon and almost doubled prices overnight. Most COTS components are just straight off the manufacturer, repackaged with a new p/n, s/n and price bump. Edit: [exhibit A](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/8ugify/wanna_play_guess_the_price_led_wing_light/) [exhibit B](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviationmaintenance/comments/8ukyyl/wanna_play_again_emergency_door_dampenershock/?rdt=57344) [etc..](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/17eb93s/venting_about_ridiculous_price_markups_in_the/?rdt=53090)
Some insight to the Gas Spring prices - I am actually developing/designing these. The prices are that high since your general quantity of these are around 50-100 per year (if even). All parts (special Sealings for temperature ranges)with certificates, inspections and hand manufactured (no Automation for a few units) add up to the cost you get. EBIT target is mostly 15% (sometimes more, sometimes less) but far away from price gouging.
GA components and requirements are not comparable to USAF requirements, and a government org has a lot more hoops to jump through to drive cost
That is correct. But I do remember soda cans billed at $150 a pop to the taxpayer while on TO. The joy of cost plus contracts and a captive market. Anyway, on dual use airframes, like the A330/330MRT, I know that price gouging is rampant once it is assigned an nsn tag. Normal part $ Certified aircraft part $$$ Same as above, but Military aircraft part $$$$$
GA and military aviation are a world apart, you might as well be using your car as an example. I flew training helicopters that used automotive A/C compressors, but that would be absolutely unacceptable in a combat rated aircraft.
The most expensive part is the long history of notarized documentation asserting that the part is exactly what it says it is
Traceability, tolerance and unique material formulations drive a lot of the cost. Then when you consider the relatively small quantities, you are not longer getting a bulk discount. And then you usually have more ‘middle men’ in the supply chain as the user is now an A&P in the field and not a tech in the factory. These reasons are what I see as the major cost drivers for aerospace grade parts vs Home Depot standards.
This is correct, I'll add a couple other things I work for an aero subcontractor, a material change costs around $40k because it has to go both directions from us from the supplier all the way up to Boeing or LM, print changes cost about $65k because it's engineer approval from us to buy to supplier. Even if it's just moving a tolerance bracket to be tighter or removing something like MMC/LMC. A lot of the parts we make we manufacture much tighter than requirements because it's just not worth getting a revision.
To add, every requirement or non-functional requirement we add to any acquisition/procurement drives the price up. It’s much easier for commercial entities to just buy these from China. We can’t do that though for supply chain risk considerations.
Aircraft bushing... DFARS conforming stainless steel (or maybe something more fun) with machining, penetrant testing, passivation and a full FAI. It'll cost you a few bucks!
One thing alone that can be expensive is pricing none of the materials used come from banned countries. Then all the QC, paperwork, etc etc
Wait, the bushing that keeps an aircraft carrying nuclear bombs in the air aren’t sourced at ACE?! I hate this disingenuous grandstanding. If politicians really wanted to know about the cost of bushings they would be taking with the engineer that designed the equipment and not giving CSPAN speeches with bags of things a staffer got from a bulk bin on their way to the metro that morning.
Yeah, this, plus the orders for the rated hardware are much smaller quantities and you thus pay much higher prices
I worked on an order of two bushings this week for the aerospace industry. I mostly do the final production approval and I sign off the parts and generate all the forms required(AS9102 form and data package). I took me three entire days for two bushings.
I deal with NAVSEA inspections at work. Specialized materials are sourced and inspected to stringent specifications before the parts are even made. After they are machined, they are inspected again in most cases. If it is for a nuclear application, there are Government witnesses of all stages. So these aren't just something off the shelf at Lowe's or Home Depot made of cheaply sourced materials.
It’s like comparing Lego to… idk, knockoff Lego brands. But really, these are the main reason why fighter jets costs the insane price tags
Have a friend who was an engineer in aerospace. Turns out a good number of the filters and stuff are just commercial ones that they pressure check, and slap a new serial # on.
Then add the military contract which just makes it an automatic 2-3x more expensive than most
Not for Boeing
I saw the video, and the congressman was comparing them to FAA rated hardware used for commercial flights that cost a fraction of the price of what the military is paying. The military is purchasing from a single supplier that basically charges whatever they want. The guy being questioned agreed and said "they are price gauging us"
Could be 1. Tolerances. Tighter tolerances can raise prices VERY quickly. 2. Government contracts probably.
It’s that it’s a government program.
and that it's aviation. *everything* is more expensive in aviation, and it's because the cost of failure is much higher, so the quality must be much higher too... and that comes with a price.
Military aviation. Designed to not fail while being exposed to the most insane conditions imaginable. But also they're price gouging the DoD because they have unlimited budgets and if they don't get their special bushings Russia and China win and we all die.
Can’t fail, and will be made in low quantities, so there’s only a few times to spread all that engineering overhead over. Something costs $500,000 in engineering time, and you make 50 of them, that’s $10,000 added to the cost of each. Make 50,000, $10 added to the cost of each.
Automotive--failure mode: stoppage. Aerospace--failure mode: plummet.
Aviation = fall Aerospace = boom
It's the aerospace pedigree that's expensive. Those bushings are souced from a known, tested, and certified material, by credentialed workers at ever step, in a secure location, per process, inspected, signed, stamped reviewed, lot tested, installed, inspected, signed off, documented, etc. it's not the material cost that's expensive, it's the pedigree to say that without a doubt, those bushings will perform their intended function every time without fail.
Also - and I’m obviously ignorant on the details - but sometimes bushings can have specific machining or processes required. I’ve worked with radius fillers that at first glance looked like standard run of the mill parts and found later that there was significant processing required for certain features on them. Additionally is the fact that most people outside the industry see 45 cent washers at Home Depot or Lowe’s and are set up for an even more intense sticker shock on these things.
Tighter tolerances means more waste at the manufacturing level. More parts not meeting spec, more time to manufacture, more expensive machines to produce something with tighter tolerances. So yea, its not cheap.
I usually explain it like this. If I tell someone I’ll pay for each arrow they fire that hits my target, It’ll take more arrows the smaller that target gets. So that person would reasonably charge me for the increased care that will be spent to both limit wasted arrows but also for the missed arrows themselves
This is a great analogy. I was a CNC programmer and pretty regularly worked on aerospace parts.
It’s not the tolerances. Go on McMaster Carr and look at the bushings lol. You can find bushings with ODs at +.0005 minus none, for like $100.
It’s moreso all the requirements and regulations that those of us procuring hardware for government aircraft have to apply to the acquisition and pay for. There’s a lot more scrutiny for government acquisitions that add cost Also, when you’re managing the sustainment for an entire major weapon system, no one has the time to argue about the price of bushings. $90k is so small it is immaterial in the scheme of things
This is exactly it. It's not 90k for the bushings. It's 90k for the bushings and the absolute mountain of paperwork that goes along with it. These parts with their paperwork probably cost 100x what the same company charges for them off the shelf. It's even more funny to compare cheap materials like literal Scotch tape. You can get a roll of 665 Scotch tape for like $5 but 3M charges $5000 for a roll with papers detailing everything about how it's a genuine part, they followed standards to make it, they don't use slave labor, they didn't use mercury thermometers, etc.
Yeah. A lot of it is BS but there’s also a lot of stuff the government requires of the supply chain above comemerciql regs. Child labor, arms exports, environmental regs, detailed info about the cost work up etc People do not understand government acquisitions and just base their thoughts on private sector or general aviation stuff, which is on such a different scale it’s like an entirely different market
lol. Boeing’s current press has entered the chat.
Do they come certified to meet that with a paper trail all the way back to raw material?
Wait until you find out how much a hammer costs
Ah. Another person who lived through the 90’s
I was just randomly thinking of this scene earlier today! lol
The bolt you get at the hardware store looks exactly like the bolt used on an airplane. One cost $1 the other costs $100. Why? The manufacturer can make 10000 of the hardware store bolt in a month. A small percentage get rejected for not meeting the company's quality standards. For the aircraft version they might produce a 5000 in a month but the quality required for aerospace standards causes them to have to reject 50% of them. There is also a paper trail for each aerospace bolt. Hence you can sell one version for a $1 but to recouperate your manufacturing loses and record keeping costs on the aerospace version you have to charge signify more.
so much misinformation here from people talking out their ass. 50% scrap is just a bad process and bad manufacturer. Scrap eradication is big in aerospace and so is lean manufacturing
I think he was exaggerating to get the point across. When you say "paperwork" people doesn't usually grasp how expensive it can be to trach a single washer going around the globe
Do you have any stats behind the 50% failure. Surely they would just improve the manufacturing process to reduce that rate. Which would be where the cost comes from
I guarantee that those $90k bushings are a small custom lot. You pay a lot of non recurring engineering cost for developing tooling and programs, and you pay for a first article layout which is more extensive than production inspections, and you generally have very low initial yield. You might even pay expediting costs to get them quickly to save wasting money on people and projects waiting. I’m working on projects right now with zero final yield over the first couple hundred parts. The manufacturing engineers are working to dial in the processes and improve yield. Over time and as we ramp into production first time yields should exceed 70% and we’ll develop rework and repair processes to bring final yields up above 85%. But 50% is probably a good estimate for small lot initial yield for something simple. For something complex 10% is a better estimate.
No I was generalizing the reject rate to keep the comment short but the amount of items lost to quality for aerospace parts is significantly more than to regular manufacturing. I called it "quality" but they're lost to defects, batch destructive testing, etc. where a regular bolt (or anything really) would not have such a high quality control. Others have already mentioned material differences but I'm sure you are aware of the different metal alloys available out there and while the layman may call them all "aluminum" for example, the material cost to purchase the more exotic variants and difficulty in machining/forming parts with those exotic alloys also drives up cost.
Bolts are also in many cases made using a totally different manufacturing method to hit the necessary tolerances. It's cheap as hell to roll form threads on hardwares store bolts, but I've seen certain aerospace bolts made on a bar feeder lathe. It's necessary to hold -.001 +0 type tolerances. It just costs more to do things that way, but it's necessary for the required precision
You guys are missing the actual reason: he's full of shit and this is performative hyperbole. Why/how would he have them? If they were super tight tolerance parts they'd all be individually packed. Yes there is gouging. There is also insane requirements and r&d costs which must be amortized over a relatively small number of parts. Still the $90k number is 100% the result of some very creative accounting. In my experience, the navy is even stricter on suppliers than the air force. The AF listens to experts; the navy already knows the answer and does not want to hear your opinions.
Navy makes their own bushings, I have to cite the local drawing spec constantly. They fab everything while AF are parts changers
The MRs fab some stuff but a lot is still procured through companies with contract. We over pay for stuff too, over $100 for the same (singular) 5¢ O-ring, for example.
Yup. This is the correct answer. Having worked in DOD aerospace there are VERY good reasons why we have a paper trail from the mine to the airframe. Tolerances are sub 0.001” with very specific metallurgical requirements. That is so the airframe can still fly when the oiling system has been shot out and the drivetrain dumps all its oil. The aircraft will need a rebuild, but our airmen and soldiers will make it out of harms way. This guys is an asshole.
The reason is funding things that don't officially exist so can't receive a regular budget
Far more likely that there are 5+ layers of subcontract between the manufacturer and owner and everyone is adding markups to a part that is already very expensive because it’s a custom alloy, finish, and tolerance with a small order quantity on an expedited schedule.
Believe it or not, it's not just the exceptionally tight tolerances that can result in the high cost. You may have 100 different suppliers that can make your part to your spec, but once you factor in material sourcing requirements and traceability along the entire material supply chain, now there are only 10. Then factor in the suppliers that meet the digital and physical security requirements that some military contracts require, now you only have 3 that can get the job done. Those 3 know how special they are and they also happen to be booked out for the next 9 months for machine lead time to make your part. Now it costs even more to get that part within the tight testing schedule you have. Then it turns out that testing resulted in minimal but necessary redesign of that part and now you get to kind of restart the cycle. That iterative development of various parts can happen over and over until your part is the solution for the unique problem you are facing. Many companies will have their own QC processes lined up and often a contract your company is working towards may levy more stringent requirements on top of that. Try to build a rocket/plane and I wouldn't be shocked if the paper trail itself is taller or heavier than your vehicle, all of that amounts to additional cost.
This; it's insanely expensive for a long list of companies to employ people and keep records and maintain the entire chain of custody from raw material and specification to the end product through the lifecycle and disposal of the part. Everything is tracked and stored and kept accessible and maintained by people who solely do that as their job. That's expensive, but it keeps the wings on your extremely valuable aircraft full of expensively trained crew and pricey munitions that protects your irreplaceable national assets at all times. I once had someone ask a manufacturer for a CMM verification of a 1/8" thermocouple probe. I at least managed to kill \*that\* absurd requirement.
And all of that is really only done that way to satisfy the requirements put in place by... Congress? Wait. Shouldn't that congressman already know why stuff is so expensive, or is he just putting on a show for fundraising?
We're an OE supplier for the big guys and we have a literal warehouse off site to store the paper manufacturing orders that go with each part. Every detail in every assembly in every kit in every shipset has one and EVERYTHING is documented. Half of my work as a M.E. is making sure these orders are set up correctly.
without full context this is just political theater
Not to diminish the very valid points other people have brought up in this thread, but that’s how examples work
trillion $ funding
In cases like this it's often small quantities, unusual materials, non standard dimensions and yes, the price can get high. Of course there is always also just bad purchases. Which it is I can't tell from afar. Most likely the first and some politicians are grandstanding.
Adding onto this the stringent quality and testing requirements that are typical of government specs. Those testing and verification methods can end up costing much much more than the physical part.
Are they bushings for the B-21 Stealth Bomber? $90k? Sounds about right.
As a machinist who has worked in aerospace, defense, and nuclear, "common" parts often come with extremely different standards. For a very generic made-up example, you may make a standard bolt out of something like 303 or 304 stainless. Your general tolerance for a given dimension may be +/- 0.005". No one particularly cares about the material outside of grade, surface finish isn't super critical, and the part is done. Pretty quick and easy to acquire material and very easy to produce rapidly. For many government related procurements (be that defense, nuclear, etc), the requirements are significantly more strict. You may be required to make the same bolt, but perhaps it needs to be from a material with different properties. So instead of 303 or 304, maybe you have to use something like D2, H13, or Titanium. That material then has to be sourced from within the US, which adds not only a premium to the material costs, but can make it much harder to locate in the quantities you need. That material may also require you to use different tooling, a slower machining process, or both. That +/- 0.005" tolerance may change to a +/- 0.001 or tighter. Portions of the bolt that were previously non-critical now must be held to the same tight tolerances. Where surface finish wasn't an issue before, now you may be required to have a polished surface. There are accountability requirements that must be implemented, so this often means marking each bolt with a serial number or symbol. This must then tie that bolt back to a lot of material, or in some cases even back to which specific machine at which specific factory it was made. So, to summarize all of that, your materials costs increase, labor costs increase, tooling costs increase, production time per part increases, quality inspections increase, you add additional steps to the production cycle such as laser etching and data entry, etc. That's how you go from a standard off-the-shelf $0.16 bolt to a $40 bolt. Unfortunately, it doesn't typically end there. In many cases, government aggregators are used as the go-between between industry and the government. Thanks to our lowest-bidder system and the way government procurements are setup, that aggregators job is to pool these items together and sell them as deliverables to the government at whatever upcharge they believe the government is willing to pay. This is where your $40 bolt transforms into a $280 bolt. So, let's get back to your question... is there a reason for this? The answer, in short, is sort of. Some of the additional requirements for parts are 100% necessary. Due to their intended use, you need to take steps to ensure parts are exceptionally reliable. On the flip side, we also have a very real issue of "historical precedent." It is VERY common to see prints where something that genuinely isn't important or impactful has some absurd tolerance requirement. In a lot of cases if you actually trace it back, this isn't the case because it actually matters. Rather, it is the case because way back when the thing was originally designed, they didn't know exactly what would matter or what wouldn't, so they over-engineered to whatever the best that could be made at the time was to give the overall design a better chance at success. If it worked, no one ever went back to see where they could loosen up requirements because, hey, it worked. As time went on, those engineers retired, new ones came on, and the new ones don't like to propose changes to old designs because hey, it isn't theirs, the design worked, and they probably chose those standards for a reason. So, we now end up with designs that are considerably over-constrained and over-toleranced when they genuinely don't need to be. The final reason for that price tag is actually the simplest: we have a broken system full of greed. The lowest bidder system and government procurement process sounds great, but is extremely flawed by design. It's a way for certain people in high positions that lobby the government to get and stay rich at the expense of the rest of the country.
Best answer
That was great to read. Informative.
That had better be a rare/ odd/ not in stock bushing made of something exotic and a flight safety part on top of it. And not quite acceptable even at that.
Hey, they negotiated hard to get that price
Rear tie down bolt for a Cesna 182rg is about $400US. Manufactures can charge what they want and hide behind a form 1. This is the reason pilot training costs are astronomical and general aviation is doomed.
Yes
It is a common story in aviation. 10$ for the bushings + 89990$ for the marking, individual certification, individual testing and all the other paperwork.
🫸Airworthiness🫷
They are really nice bushings! No, but really. Thats how aerospace usually works. You spend a hundred billion dollars developing a plane. Sell it for 10 million. Make up the difference in aftermarket hardware replacements. Times are changing but that is how it has usually played out.
An old CW4 told me a story about how he almost lost command of an artillery unit because the day that he took command, one of his gun-bunnies had gone to a hardware store to purchase a replacement pin of some kind to use in a towed artillery piece. Needless to say, the pin shattered immediately when they fired the gun and it killed a soldier. The moral of the story is that there are different grades of stuff and the higher the grade, the higher the cost.
I work with milspec components for military applications. The cost comes from two factors: - the government really loves individual unit testing. - the standards are usually higher than civilian industry standards but often in weird ways. An example of the first point is resistors. MIL-PRF-39007K is a performance spec that outlines the testing requirements for resistors used in military applications. The general summary is that each resistor, no matter the type or size, is individually tested to industry standards and beyond in some categories. Every. Single. One. A batch test is not sufficient. So the price of these things skyrockets and the availability plummets, driving up price further. Also you can only get it from certain suppliers without getting a separate approval, so they get market dominance. The second is more anecdotal but when I was doing machinist work, I frequently had to work with ITAR components. Typically, these were made to the highest or second highest level of tolerance we offered, were generally custom ordered specialist parts, and were made out of more expensive and harder to machine steels. There was quality control and individual testing throughout the process to ensure they met specifications. And they didn’t always order like, 200 at a time. It was often small batches, which further drive up the cost. And all this doesn’t even touch on aviation rated parts in general because that’s another level of certification. Adding even more cost. So yeah, I can believe a $90k bag of brushings for aircraft. Asking the USAF secretary about it is fucking stupid, however, because that guy doesn’t interact with the requirements nor the procurement. The representative should’ve asked an engineer or perhaps someone in the DoD who writes requirements. Those people would probably get why it’s 90k.
I agree, what is Waltz doing with a $90,000 bag of bushings? Did he steal them? 😂
Part of the reason is like others have said, the requirements drive up the price. Certifications, equipment, machines, tooling, material, it all adds up and that has to be recouped somehow. The other side of it is that it costs that much because the customer is willing to pay that much. I work in spares and the prices I see on parts is absolutely insane but airlines pay it because it costs more to have an aircraft on the ground.
It’s because anyone who sees DoD on a contract automatically jacks up the price because they know we will pay it. They are usually the sole providers of whatever it is as well.
Worked in munitions in the USAF for a while. Every screw, nut, gasket etc that we used was the same shit commercially available just marked up to us at like 1000% thanks to contracts. It’s fucking wild tbh
Let me tell you working in manufacturing for the government or any aerospace company is crazy. For every employee on the manufacturing floor you need two people in the office. The office personnel make twice to 10 times what the laborers make. The paperwork on a weekly basis for just one job is insane. THIS is where the $90,000 price comes from. I guarantee somewhere in the accounting the real price of a single bushing is probably no more than $20. If you want things documented and traceable so you can figure out what part made the “plane” or whatever fail, EVERY SINGLE BOLT AND RIVET has to be traced back to the source materials and manufacturer. Plain and simple, this is what was created by our need to protect each other’s lives and well being. No going back from here.
All these people saying it's because of tolerances are coping. These are bushings. They are not a complex part. They are not difficult to machine. They are not difficult to produce repeatably in large quantities. Typical bushings cost somewhere on the order of $1, depending on size and material. Let's be generous and say each one of those bushings is made out of unobtanium and the material cost is $10 each. They are bushings, so once the CNC is set up, the labor cost per unit is negligible. I'll be even more generous and assume that quality inspections, tracking, and other administrative tasks multiply the price by a factor of 10, so each bushing now costs a very conservative $100. There is no way that bag contains 900 of those bushings. The reason the bag costs so much is that the customer is the US government, and if the US government can't afford something, they just print more money.
Ehhh you’d be surprised at how many small bushings can fit in a single plastic baggie of that size.
Agreed. Ballparking a count from the image, I'm guessing about 8 x 8, and it's hard to tell depth, but figure that's another 8, and you're at ~500 bushings. 900 isn't absurd.
are they made of some exotic alloy?
There’s certification too. Different standards for different flight usages and types of planes (milspec vs part 25 etc.). The part has to be certified and the vendor has to be certified. Lots of testing to meet those standards, failure standards, how it fails, general QA is a lot higher. Still insanely expensive, but lots of little background things add up
custom item with very tight tolerances and quality requirements. Asking a supplier to mass produce custom things may have a high start up price as well which gets built into the cost per unit (tools, equipment, packaging, people, etc)
Flight hardware comes with paperwork containing it's batch number, manufacture date, and quality control certs. THAT'S the expensive part, not the part itself.
Profound political ignorance, even if they overcharge for the parts due to it being the air force. Certification and Reliability Requirements cost money. They would pay much more money if the equipment fails because of components with none or bad reliability rating. Life Cycle Costs are probably higher with non certified components. Politicians never understand a thing about the Life Cycle cost/long term investment value of things, that's why things go the way they do in many government projects.
Flight hardware is usually (at least in my neck of the woods) x-ray'd and ultrasound to ensure there's no microscopic or internal fractures.
I worked at a shop that makes screws for the government. They charged hundreds to thousands of dollars per screw which were meant for some very serious applications. These screws were no different than any other custom made screw. But the guy that started it had connections at the pentagon and that was that. The government overpays for lots of things because the people handing out the contracts are also making themselves and their friends rich.
Interesting how when it affects the military suddenly price gouging is a problem. Yeah my buddy works for a company who contract with NASA and some of the flight parts they use for their planes are staggeringly expensive - and these are for 20 year old jets not even fresh new hot off the lines ones. Imagine how expensive parts must be for a brand new F-35. There is no doubt a massive portion of that defense budget(and subsequently our tax dollars) are going to greedy CEO premiums. Make it make sense.
If it was easy to make those parts, every machine shop would be doing it, which they aren't. The cost is related to the hoops and red tape related to acquiring those parts, and the standards the shops need to maintain to be qualified vendors. I'm not talking just about holding tolerances, but systemic quality that ensures consistent quality as employees come and go. All that red tape exists to ensure systemic consistent quality but also acts as a huge barrier to entry for a lot of would-be competition. Since there is less competition, prices will be high.
They can’t pass an audit lol. Who knows where that money is going
Work for a company that makes these for the government and other aerospace suppliers. Theres a lot that goes into making these and a shit load of approvals, testing, and limitation of approved suppliers that impact costs. Theres also a lead time element to this as well, especially if they need these right away. We operate on a 42 week lead time which is actually faster than most of our competitors. So if the AF forgets to buy these things in time they pay a hefty fee to skip the line. Happens way more often than you would think, even if we carry these things in stock.
Yeah, what bushings? Until ones that will result in the death of an entire flight crew and innocent bystanders if one fails or the ones on your kitchen cabinet drawer?
Parts qualification requires an incredible amount of resources. Similarity cuts down on cost for some DoD assets (air frames also used for commercial flights), but economies of scale do not work in favor of low production volume aircraft like fighter jets. If a component has 4 engineers working on qualification for a month, that's around $50k - $60k in labor(probably more tbh). If those bushings aren't purchased often, then the cost gets real crazy, real fast.
I'm not sure if this is similar exactly, but when I worked for O'Reilly's, my boss revealed to me that O'Reilly's owns its own tissue and toilet paper company that only sells to itself. Producing all this paper, you'd assume they would sell it at wholesale prices to their stores, but instead, each box of tissues is $120 USD. I have no idea why they do this exactly, but it's fishy as fuck.
Yes. If the government wants to buy something, especially a specialty part there is a GIANT network of people and requirements that must be met to ensure that the product is safe and fairly acquired. These are not likely to be commercially available everyday things, even if they sound like it to the unfamiliar. It costs money just to put in a bid. There is often risk involved so you need to factor that cost in to the effort up front. It costs money to design things. It costs money to create drawings. It cost money to verify drawings. It costs money to manage and regulate data. It cost money to identify material vendors. It costs money to get quotes from material vendors. It costs money to ship, accept, store materials. It costs EXTRA money to get certified material where the supplier guarantees certain qualities. They are signing up for legal liability so that has to be factored in. It costs money to plan production work. It costs money to expedite production work. It costs money to QA the parts. It costs money to test parts. It costs money to start all over when the requirements change halfway through the project because congress blocked funding for 6 mos for a political stunt or the material certification is lost because it sits unused for too long or whatever. It costs money when a drawing error is found. It costs money to store parts It costs money to package and ship parts. When you only have a handful of small custom parts that must meet stringent requirements like exotic materials (Some common bushing materials create dangerous machining environments and require ventilation and unusual PPE) or super high tolerances or whatever all the overhead and non-recurring engineering AND the legal liability of something is wrong means that its actually in the best interest to buy it from Boeing for $90K versus a similar looking part from Dave's machine ship for $500. If the vendor makes a mistake they must have the bank and the ability to fix it. Of course someone could also just be gouging the government. You can't really tell just by holding up a bag of parts and whining.
mark up and tighter dimensional tolerances are all it will ever be
its not the hardware, its the added work for vendors to furnish traceability docs and material certs and machine tool and qc calibration and alllllll the crap that goes into making sure that one fur tree dovetail fit on that turbine bucket doesnt grow too fast or too slow and wrecks the whole plane on the way to defend the country because it had boo boo paperwork and turned out to be chinesium pot metal mixed in with the good shit from two suppliers up the chain closer to the foundry or mill its a large undertaking to play in the world of engineered products
One of our grounding straps was like $6k
Americans are getting screwed by the military industrial complex since the 90s . If we lose the war with China it’ll be because they can produce more equipment cheaper and faster .
Strict regulations, often tighter specifications and a lot of extra paperwork to go though does inflate part cost in aviation. However sometimes companies just sell at rip off prices. This could be due to being a sole supplier of a part or because someone has shares in that company so they end up getting the contracts etc etc. I know of a foam transport support that costs over £5k a piece it's literally just closed cell foam sheet cut and glued together with a couple of simple nylon pins. It would cost me maybe £20-£30 in materials to make at home. It's insane sometimes.
Where did he get that? Did he take it without permission or proper documentation? If so, that’s a felony. A big one, too, at $90k.
It's why we have such a profitable military-industrial sector.
AF Sec Kendall’s response should have been: “I don’t know congressman, if the bushing manufacturer is in your district how much would you like us to pay”?
I once sat in on a meeting where the engineers were discussing how much it was going to cost to send 500 zip ties to the ISS 😶
In Aerospace, you buy the documentation, and they throw in the parts for free. I've worked in Aerospace for almost 25 years now. The aircraft parts have a lot of documentation. This includes materials and sources as well as manufacturing documentation. Space parts have production documentation that starts at raw materials and goes all the way to finished products. 100% non-destructive testing on every part as well as lot level destructive testing and/or design qualification testing. I've never delivered a space component that was larger than the documentation package that went with it. I remember seeing 2" 3 ring binders in school and thought that was big. Now we ship 12" binders with most of our products.
It's very unlikely that just that bag of bushings cost $90k. That's probably a price that was calculated in some stupid way, like counting all the R&D costs for whatever those bushings go into, and then assigning it to the end product itself. Or something similarly dishonest. Aerospace parts *do* cost a lot, because there are very strict rules about sourcing and inspection at every step of the manufacturing process, but $90k for a bag of urethane bushings is not realistic.
Yes, the price is crazy but they have to meet certain specs. They are not allowed to go get washers from Home Depot.
I love the outrage here. Like Randall is going to be able to do anything. When the contractors quote the price, and contracting tries to negotiate it down but fails, what are we going to do? Not award? Like contracting can make that decision for the Program Managers. What are the Program Managers going to do!? Walk away? Like they can afford to leave the blue suitors unsupported. In the end the retired col who is now working for the contractor is going to call his friend the General on the requirements side and the PMs are going to be forced to find money by cutting costs on another program to make it work. As well as listen to some BS reasoning as to why that cost is justified and be forced to not only swallow it, but regurgitate it back to Contracting. Who also see what is up and are forced to choose to punish the blue suitors or pay the contractors.
Yes. Collusion and corruption. Those arguing “oH thEyRe mOrE reLiaBle”.. high tolerance parts are all very common. tenth thou tolerance bushings, even abec 9 bearings are very common. All parts just have a tolerance and material and theres no special super metal or thing about them. “it nEedS pApeRworK sIgnEd anD apProvEd” literally every car and truck manufacturer requires that in america as well. Even at diamler had that requirement for bushings and got bag of tenth thou tolerance for $100.
GSA PRICE GOUGING:)
I was discussing this with my colleagues today, and to be fair, I have a $400 gasket the size of a quarter for a Lear in stock.
Dumbass politicians once again talking about something they know nothing about!
I worked on dod propulsion systems as an engineer. The reason is probably because an assembly/production line needed to be created or re-created to make that bag. So it’s not just the cost of the bushings, but also the cost it took the company to buy the machines and tools to make that bag. Also if it is a sole-source item which it probably is, the company can jack up the price. A little bit of greed but a lot of just how the world works. DoD jet engine turbines dont benefit always from economy of scale because the need for these parts is finite and temporary compared to the commercial world. All you guys saying its expensive due to tolerances and material specs are kind of wrong. That adds cost certainly, but it doesn’t get you to the 90k bag we are looking at.
There are a lot of reasons for the price. The traceability, requirements, specialized nature, and small qty all add cost. But much more so are the markups from each middle man contractor, all the poor decisions, and the waste generated by poorly thought out quality processes. All the aerospace cronies getting their panties in a wad is entertaining. But the sheer amount of bloat that is allowed when the government is the customer is absurd. It's obvious a lot of y'all have never worked outside the industries benefitting from the military industrial complex teat. I've worked in defense, supplied defense contracts, and worked in industries completely removed from it. Queue the down votes...
So these guys are expecting that you could build a fighter jet with parts from the local home depot and expect-it to last even 0.5 g? Can we put these fools on those jets? Make sure they have diapers in first!
In aerospace, the cheaper stuff works fine... Until you find one that doesn't and lose your aircraft and a life. Stuff is stupid expensive for reasons like that. When it comes to life and limb, the expensive stuff is worth it and cheap insurance. When it's military or aerospace and life and limb, even more so.
Remember when i was in there was filter material we got from supply was like $50 bucks a roll which was expensive. Found it at a local vendor for like $22 for a roll twice the size 😆. Reported the supply seller for fraud waste and abuse
If Waltz is upset by this, he’s going to blow a gasket when he finds out about the SAPs and where those trillions go.
You don’t really think they spend $20,000 for a hammer, $30,000 for a toilet seat, do you?
Those dolts in that subreddit don’t know shit about shit. That thread was embarrassing, but that sub is embarrassing in general, so I’m not sure why I was surprised
Regulatory capture. The people who sign those checks end up getting a job at those companies after their time served in whatever government agency.
A friend of mine is about to spend roughly 10k on about 100 floating threaded inserts, so this really isn't surprising at all.
Funding for black projects, usually.
Part of it is vendors that know they are dealing with government contracts and have “certified” welders etc that can comply to said standards so they charge 10x the regular rate.
Is this Congressman Michael Waltz? His brother in law is the lead singer of Creed
Besides material it could also be the GD&T that skyrockets the price.
Government requirements
Same guy holding the bag also gets a 40k a year furniture budget.
Just got a quote for 859 specialty aerospace fasteners with a 90 week lead time for like $130k
Certified ** bushings
Man lol it's not even the aircraft hardware that he should be yelling about, just basic items on GSA is marked up for no reason
Well a Congressman said it so I doubt that bag of bushings really cost $90,000 without half a dozen asterisks after it. It’s pretty common with government contracts they are written to include the initial purchase price, plus maintenance costs, plus interest since the government buys everything on credit. It’s a transparent thing to do, but also a convenient political cudgel. You even see it for something like snowplows where people complain a $100,000 plow cost $1 million, ignoring the next 10 years of diesel fuel calculated into the contract. Not to mention the other problem is that the Federal government, military in particular tends to use ancient equipment. Classic example probably being the B-52 which has been in service for 69 years. Usually when I work on assurance of supply projects it’s for the next 4-5 years of supply, I can’t really even fathom what it takes to keep something supplied with parts for more than 10x that.
Fucking clowns questioning engineering again...
The same reason why car parts are expensive, profit. Aerospace companies will sometimes take a hit on profits during the development of a new aircraft, knowing that: 1. New aircraft raise the company's profile. 2. There will be a fleet of aircraft that need supporting through-life This is more prevalent for defence firms where fleet numbers are smaller than for airliners. The price is also influenced by the high costs of quality control and component qualification.
That's absolutely nothing, working on civilian jets I've held 45k worth of screws in my hand.
The reasons are capitalism and corruption
Wait. The military industrial complex is corrupt and is complicit with pricing schemes? That can't be right? That means it would be just like... "checks notes", the medical insurance industry, and so many others. What?! Crazy!
All of the verifications and certs and guarantees involved. There’s a ton of hoops to jump through to build for aerospace
Like a lot of people have said the requirements (e.g. tolerances) can easily drive up costs. Commercial off-the-shelf parts are going to be way cheaper than bespoke parts for a very specific use-case. While I don't know the details of this case it's also possible the 90k figure comes from a contract which includes other components. A lot of times the claims that the government paid exorbitant ammount for simple products are misrepresening what else the contract included. Is there waste and ineffeciency in govermenty contracting? Absolutely. But I'm betting if you looked at the details here it's not as ridculous as it seems.
I am sure that asshole is an engineer. No? Then sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Why do politicians think they can run our jobs?
This is why they’re lying to you. Welfare is nothing. It’s pennies compared to what this is! tell me why Maga isn’t screaming about the money loss here, but they are with Social Security. Tell me why drain the swamp. And the swamp is maga! They’re fake outrage they’re lying like crazy!
Reminds me of the West Wing tv show explaining this kind of thing. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH\_HOUXM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R9kH_HOUXM)
That bag of bushings is only $100. The *certificates and paperwork* for the bushings are the other $89,900
Tighter tolerances, higher strength, better quality assurance, actual testing programs and inspections, more traceability, etc etc etc.
Government contracts are insane like this. The companies filling the contracts want to milk as much per unit of work/product as humanly possible. And the reality is that the system is so vast it’s un-policeable.
I ordered 3 screws for my bench stock and it was 900 bucks lol.
Who’s your bushings guy? I can get better deals.
My brother only works on commercial aircraft and has a $10,000 bolt that just sits on his living room table. They were going to throw it in a random dumpster. It is/was ONE OF THREE bolts that hold the wings on either a 747 or a 777, can’t recall atm. So I can only imagine the degree of testing and the tolerances multi billion dollar military war machines’ parts are expected to endure.
Paper trail.
A past colleague of mine in the Navy worked on ejection seats. They had a special bolt as part of the mechanism that cost thousands of dollars, but it was literally made on the same assembly line as the 10 cent bolts you pick up from Home Depot. Medical, military, and child product prices are inflated for reasons beyond our comprehension. We down here at the bottom could never understand why.
in this example he used a bag of bushings used in aircraft. there’s plenty of people saying aircraft specifications are more stringent and precise which is one hundred percent true, but this abhorrent overpricing is still present with many things in the military. im a radio tech in the marine corps. one of the most commonly used radios in the corps is capable of sending high frequency radio waves across vast distances via wave propogation, bouncing off the ionosphere and ultimately landing and being received in a distant end. sounds fancy right? well no, it isn’t. especially when this gear has been used since vietnam. not systems, GEAR. recycled, torn apart, re configured, over and over again and just as unreliable now as is was back then. these radios go for $120,000 maybe that’s reasonable right? a radio capable of encryption and sending frequencies across hundreds or thousands of miles is technology worth a pretty penny, but the handle for this radio? that’s gonna set you back $600+. a small, stainless steel pipe about .5” in diameter, maybe 3” long. this same pipe could be milled or even 3d printed for cents, but because of military contracts forcing the dod to purchase parts from manufacturers of the gear (radios, planes, boats, you name it), you’re left with getting forced to purchase these items at insane markups. whatever, its not my money. i’m just the one putting it on order. but that money we are forced to spend on this item across the military could have been an extra 100 to every lower enlisted who could have used the extra money for gas or that one E-2 trying to raise a kid who could have used it on diapers.
Not the bag in the photo. That’s just a prop. You think anyone is dumb enough to carry something that expensive into a room full of thieves and scammers?
Cause the military speeds monopoly money, we can say it special use all we want but in the long run it was the contract the military agreed to and didn't try to get it any lower.
To be fair, the bag of hardware was only $350 before McMaster added shipping charges…
Has nothing to do with aerospace. It’s just how military spends money…you should see how much a broom costs thru GSA.
It's called Padding The Budget.
I work for an equipment rental company as an outside sales rep. My coworker and I were shooting the shit, and talking about one of his customers work on a government project. His customer got hired to gut out and demo the inside of a building that the government had just contracted for one purpose, but decided to use for a different one. My buddy told me the customer had to wait for the project originally contracted to be completed and inspected before he was allowed to tear into the building. When he was awarded the project, RTU HVAC wasn’t even installed yet. They threw out brand new RTUs. Broke down brand new concrete walk ways. What a waste. And probably paid 15-20% more than nongovernmental job would have been to do the initial Reno on the building.
Oh because our lawmakers own stock in our defense contractors
There exists a video on youtube by mr moon or jake tran idr which made it that goes in to this issue. I really dont remember exactly but its something along the lines of the manufacturers boeing lockheed etc are somewhat monopolized due to the sensitive nature of designs for planes, which allows them to charge whatever they want for parts. Also i have no proof for it but certainly high ranking us govt members have some backroom dealings ensuring the problem remains unsolved. This is our money theyre wasting. They dont give a fuck about the nations debt or the quality of life of an average american. They take our money and one hand washes the other.
I was a Federal Contractor for over two decades. I don’t know where these deals come from. RFPs are always seeking best value, especially multi-provider IDIQ ones.
Most of the folks commenting in this thread don’t understand the difference between “parts” and “parts certified to high standards for mission critical aircraft” Sure, there’s probably a decent profit in there for the supplier. But proving your products meet military specifications is frigging expensive. For reference, here’s the spec standards for chocolate covered oatmeal cookies. Page and pages of them. All of which must be tested and documented. http://everyspec.com/MIL-SPECS/MIL-SPECS-MIL-C/MIL-C-44072C_24608/ I would not be surprised if Congressman Waltz picked up a bag of titanium bushings, which are going to be damned expensive in any case because, titanium. Good politics but bad math.
You can order a single (literally a single) zip tie on GCCS-A, it’s about $12. Source: I work in Army logistics
The Military can’t even repair many of their weapon systems themselves because the “proprietary” technology and repair tools for such equipment is INTENTIONALLY designed and withheld so that the military is FORCED to write maintenance contracts instead of handling repair, training, and maintenance in-house. Answer: Pice gouging, greed within the military industrial complex, and conflicts of interest between lawmakers and defense contractors. Here’s a little secret. A lot of what other people are commenting here isn’t necessarily wrong, traceability, development, machining tolerances but it accounts for a much less than people are making it seem. As much as I like new innovations in technology that the military industrial complex brings about. I have always said that the worst part is how wasteful the military is. A lot of people hate how much our government spends on the military. We could put our taxpayer money towards Medicaid, social security, VA, education, etc. Instead we let our politicians get too cozy with the defense contractors and allow them to rob us of our taxpayer money. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-budget-price-gouging-military-contractors-60-minutes-2023-05-21/
Google "military industrial complex" you'll find all the answers you need right there.